Phil Klein already wrote about Don Lemon’s ridiculously condescending comments about Nikki Haley’s sexual/childbearing prime. (Yes! This actually happened this morning, and the video is everywhere.) And I was amused to see that Phil’s leading instinct was not only the same as mine but one that a conspiracy-minded media friend of mine shared as well.
What Phil and I first thought was, “This is a free in-kind donation to the Nikki Haley GOP primary campaign,” because it’s a transparently and disgustingly sexist attack that instantly inspires sympathy for Haley and contempt for Lemon while raising Haley’s news profile. (It’s important to note that Lemon’s rant wasn’t just insulting in some anodyne way; no, this was hard-bitten, old-school Hollywood Nasty “women in the workplace who aren’t in their sexual prime are washed up” stuff that could have come straight out of the script outtakes for 9 to 5 or Tootsie in 1980.) What my more-conspiratorially inclined friend fulminated, beyond that, was that “this is a crazy bank-shot play by CNN to help Trump get the nomination.” (My friend, as I remind you, is really quite paranoid.)
As much as I enjoy occasionally squinting to see if there are wheels within wheels, I’m afraid that my friend is far off the mark. Lemon’s rant reads far more like the immature tantrum of a man on professional tilt, a man who loathes working with his female co-hosts so much that he cares more about personally trolling them on the air than about whatever it is he’s actually saying to garner that response. (His pathetic Twitter apology this afternoon, which pointedly neglected to mention Nikki Haley by name or even refer to her indirectly, is all the evidence you need of the petulance involved here.)
It seems clear to me that Lemon is daring CNN to fire him and gambling that the news channel needs his talent more than he needs to comport by professional standards of decency until he gets whatever it is he wants.
On the bright side, for CNN: Nobody was watching live.